Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. International SEO
Log in to post

Category: International SEO

Discussions around international SEO tactics.

  • tylrr123


    I am glad to join seomoz,I am from China,the seomoz is a famous seo service provider company,some reason is one seoer guru named zac introduce seomoz to Chinese seor. So I think if seomoz provider seo tools or service to chinese seoer is a good idea.The market is very big.But chinese biggest SE is www.baidu.com,not google.There is something diffrent from baidu and google. My site is www.cn-sen.com, It's good performance at google with the keyword "除湿机",but it's have some trouble at baidu.I think the content of website is the main reason.and internal link is not good. Could someone give me some advise of seo to make my site better performance? thanks very much.

    | tylrr123
    0
  • M_8


    I have 5 sites with the same exact content. I have a separate webmastertool for each one and I have targeted them to each country on WebMastertools? Iam I missing something or did I do it right.Thankswww.abc.com (USA)www.abc.com.ar (argentina)www.abc.com.mx (mexico)www.abc.com.co (colombia)

    | M_8
    0
  • overalia


    Hi there! I have a spanish client who wants to enhance its online presence on the US. US is their most potential country. Its ok to create a .US website (and geolocalizate in GWT to the USA) and a .COM domain for the rest of ther word (without orientation) with the same content? Thank you so much. Jabi

    | overalia
    0
  • martincad


    Is is ok to have Reciprocal Links between sites you really own ? We have a website that has been regionalized to 5 countries, using 5 different domains. The content is exclusive for the country but the keywords used might be similar. We have all the domains under the same Analytics account and all of them share the same Adsense code. Can I be penalized by Google for making reciprocal links between them ? Is something usefull for improving the SEO rank or I should avoid doing it ? Thanks in advance

    | martincad
    0
  • FXDD


    Financial company with 2 sites: 1- Mybrand.com for the US market.    
    2- global.mybrand.com is the hub for international with selection for 10 languages: drop-down allows selecting between mybrand.jp, mybrand.fr, etc Now we have the opportunity to redesign the site from zero and I am exploring to get rid of the subdomain for the global site What would be your preference to use as the international hub? a) mybrand.co.uk: I have to use lawyers to get the URL from squatter b) mybrandGlobal.com  : URL easy to get, and can be geo targeted using google webmaster tools. Cons: It might not rank as well as .co.uk in the UK, which is our biggest market c) global.mybrand.com-- pros: keep using it because it is aged and has some authority.  Google might now see subdomains as part of TLD, thus making it a valid way to separate international from US   .. Cons: SEO best practices advice to avoid subdomains because it might not pass full link value across domains. There is not really different content the subdomain, it is just the hub for international Thanks in advance for the help

    | FXDD
    0
  • Socialdude


    Hi I have a couple of topics I would like to clarify. My existing website is on .ie & we are now expanding into France & UK We have decided to take the route of example.com with subfolders for example.com/ie example.com/uk & example.com/fr just like thishttp://app.wistia.com/stats/278112 provided by SEOmoz Should we 301 redirect our existing .ie site to the .com or the .com/ie? When building links should links be built to .com or each .com .com/fr etc Also are there any good resources out there about International SEO? Thank you 🙂

    | Socialdude
    1
  • de4e


    Hello Mozers, Can you please recommend me Content Delivery Network (CDN) working both for mainland China and worldwide regions? Many people suggest ChinaCache which provide services only for Asian countries. But for me will be preferable to find  one ultimate worldwide solution. Any thoughts will be appreciated. Thanks.

    | de4e
    0
  • journeybeyondtravel


    I could have posted this somewhere else, but I cannot find it. So, I have keywords that rank well in Google US and many that do well in Google UK too. I thought all of my keywords ranking well in the US would also rank well the UK. I have figured out today that it is not the case. Why would I rank in the top 3 in the US and not even show up in the top 50 in the UK? It is very strange. Thanks for your help! I am not super new to SEO or web business. I have had a very good company that has been ranking well since 2004.

    | journeybeyondtravel
    0
  • FishEyeSEO


    I've got a client with a large e-commerce site with a  .com domain and they want to start targeting France. Other than building another site in Frence with a .fr domain, what would be the best course of action? I know that the obvious option would be to build a separate French site with a .fr domain but is there another more cost effective way? I tried doing a search for one of their key-phrases using the Google Global app (Google.fr) and they are ranking in pretty much the same position as for Google.co.uk. Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

    | FishEyeSEO
    0
  • Lobtec


    For one of our biggest sites I noticed a big difference in ranking drops in the beginning of december. The site is in Swedish so the google updates are a bit different than for google.com. For many of our keyword we dropped far down in the SERPs. Most of the keywords we had at top 10, or top 20, but these got first dropped down to 100/150+ but since then they have started to gain a bit, not near the previous results though. For our main keyword (a really high competitive keyword) we got dropped totally (+200). The site is about 7 years old, have good content, regulary updated (1-2 news a day, 2-4 new articles a week). Our traffic is still pretty good, actually almost the same as previous the big drop for the "hard" keyword. We seem to get more traffic for our long tail keywords instead, which is good. I would like be able to get traffic from both types of keywords though. One more thing to add. I have notice that a couple of our competitors, both in this area and other, also got hit in the same way. This should mean that some sort of google update/filter has hit us. So, in short, my question is if anyone knows about a update/filter in the beginning of december for the Swedish market. And, how can we work ourselves back? Edit: Also, the site ranks number one for the titel of the page and for the titel of the hard keywords, the site also ranks number one. The "right" pages also gets in the top when I do a seach for "site:domain.com keyword".

    | Lobtec
    0
  • RodneyRiley


    What is the best way to deal with multiple languages and multiple target markets? Is it better to use directories or sub-domains: English.domain.com Portuguese.domain.com Or Domain.com Domain.com/Portuguese Also should I use language meta tags to help the different language versions rank in different geographic areas e.g. Are there any examples of where this has been done well?

    | RodneyRiley
    0
  • Virrtuo


    I want to generate leads for my client through SEO process. I have involved all kind of link baits like articles, blogs, infographics, directory submissions etc.,Basically the client is B2B service provider like payroll services, Labor compliance and Staffing Solutions to various segments

    | Virrtuo
    0
  • ReneReinholdt


    I'm aware that this is not SEO related, but bare with me: Launching a new business venture and need some advise. the site will be located in the UK (for legal reasons) and since I have no experience with UK webhosts. I kinda need your help on selecting a good webhost. Money is not importants but what is: - excellent up times unlimited bandwidth So if you could share your experiences it would be much appreciated. thx in advance 🙂

    | ReneReinholdt
    0
  • H-FARM


    Hi there, Here is our situation:we need to force an IP Redirection for our US users to www.domain.com and at the same time we have different country-specific subfolders with thei own language such as www.domain.com/fr. Our fear is that by forcing an IP redirection for US IP, we will prevent googlebot (which has an US IP) from crawling our country-specific subfolders. I didn't find any clear directives from Google representatives on that matter. In this video  Matt Cutts says it's always better to show Googlebot the same content as your users http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFf1gwr6HJw&noredirect=1, but on the other hand in that other video he says "Google basically crawls from one IP address range worldwide because (they) have one index worldwide. (They) don't build different indices, one for each country". This seems a contradiction to me... Thank you for your help !! Matteo

    | H-FARM
    0
  • FXDD


    The ccTLD .jp is not available.  What URL should I use instead? MybrandJP.com  or MybrandJapan.com *Mybrand is a four-letter acronym

    | FXDD
    0
  • therealmarkhall


    We have the co.uk and com.au ccTLDS and currently operate out of the UK only but plans are in place for Australia. We can't get hold of the .org or .com so it has to be the ccTLD. I want to use the same site for both countries and either host 2 identical sites (same content) or 1 site with different domain names + meta tags for the 2 countries. Whats the best way to make this happen without screwing things up?

    | therealmarkhall
    0
  • nicolebd


    I have a site which offers free printable greeting cards in English. I have noticed that many people find the site from other countries with keywords in foreign languages. The bounce rate from these countries is high since presumably they leave when they realize that all cards are in English only. I was thinking of providing some greeting cards in different languages. I was thinking of offering each language in a subfolder which is only have the cards in that language but the content will either be in English or an automatic translation per IP. I do not plan to translate the content into different languages only the cards. What is the best way to do this?

    | nicolebd
    0
  • soapme


    Our site is currently hosted in Germany (1&1) and it primarily attracts users from the USA. We are however keen to improve our search engine rankings on UK search engines and are considering moving to UK servers. I have ‘heard’ that a site doesn’t perform as well for people visiting from the USA to UK servers as for example the German network where we are now. Can anybody offer advice on whether this will affect the response time of webpages to USA visitors? If it will have an affect, will this have a significant impact on SEO? Thanks,

    | soapme
    0
  • BCA


    I have a US based company that is expanding to Canada, would it matter if I have a .com or .ca for my website?

    | BCA
    0
  • AlexThomas


    Short of coding up your own web crawler - does anyone know/ have any experience with a good bit of software to run through all the pages on a single domain? (And potentially on linked domains 1 hop away...) This could be either server or desktop based. Useful capabilities would include: Scraping (x-path parameters) of clicks from homepage (site architecture) http headers Multi threading Use of proxies Robots.txt compliance option csv output Anything else you can think of... Perhaps an oppourtunity for an additional SEOmoz tool here since they do it already! Cheers! Note:
    I've had a look at: Nutch
    http://nutch.apache.org/ Heritrix
    https://webarchive.jira.com/wiki/display/Heritrix/Heritrix Scrapy
    http://doc.scrapy.org/en/latest/intro/overview.html Mozenda (does scraping but doesn't appear extensible..) Any experience/ preferences with these or others?

    | AlexThomas
    0
  • FXDD


    Hello SEomozers We have a site with this structure: -www.xyz.com   US customers, limited content in12 languages, -global.xyz.com  for International customers, full content in 12 languages. The global site is the hub for the rest of the world.  We are creating a new site from scratch and want to consolidate the two domains in one by using subfolders, such as: www.xyz.com  for USA,  www.wyz.com/jp   for US customers reading in japanese and www.xyz.com/int-jp  for  customers from Japan (international - will set geo location with webmastertool) What do you think would be the best naming convention for the international?
    www.xyz.com/int-jp  or
    www.xyz.com/eu-jp or
    www.xyz.com/eu/jp or
    www.xyz.com/ ...any other suggestions?

    | FXDD
    0
  • Envoke-Marketing


    Where does Google crawl the web from? Is it in the US only, or do they do it from a European base too? The reason for asking is for GeoIP redirection. For example, if a website is using GeoIP redirection to redirect all US traffic to a .com site and all EU traffic to a .co.uk site, will Google ever see the .co.uk site?

    | Envoke-Marketing
    2
  • James77


    Hi, I would like to know if anyone has an easy way off allowing me to browse a SE and get results based on as if I was browsing from a different location. EG I am based in the UK and therefore google customises my result as such. However I am working for a client targetting the US, so I need to get SE results as if I was browsing from there. Thanks

    | James77
    0
  • jay.raman


    Hi, We are about to launch a subdomain and I am not sure about which subdomain will benefit us the most: location.brand.com location.brand.co.uk Before I continue I must point out that unfortunately subfolders are not an option (sorry, hard to explain). Things to consider: Brand.com is a global site with very high domain authority, DA = 95+ Brand.co.uk has no content and simply redirects to brand.com Our product is hotels so local search is important and the local (national) market accounts for a good majority of the market. According to the following post if we were to go for location.brand.com we would benefit from ‘some’ amount of inherited domain authority but would loose out on Geo target bonus. If we went for location.brand.co.uk we would benefit significantly from Geo target bonus but would loose out completely on inherited domain authority http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview I was more inclined to go for location.brand.co.uk as our SEO agency advised that we will not benefit from the domain authority as we will be considered a new domain. However, after looking into it further I am finding it hard to decide because if we could capitalize on brand.com and inheriting part of its domain authority then it could help our seo efforts significantly. Thanks!!

    | jay.raman
    0
  • Aviatech


    Hello, One of my clients has a question on a new Quebec, Canada version of their website. The website content and copy is in the French Canadian language, but the IT Director has asked if, for the purpose of SEO, should the URLs be in French as well? So, this questions has two parts... For SEO, should the URL's be in French or left in English, to avoid crawl errors? For visitor UX, is there any reason to have them in French versus English?

    | Aviatech
    0
  • APICDA


    Hi All, I know its not an SEO question, but....................... Can anyone suggest a few good website translation "widgets" I  would like to give those who are not fluent in English and option to choose another language in which to view the page text. Thank You!!!

    | APICDA
    0
  • TroyCarlson


    I'm looking to combine my company's US web presence and its United Kingdoms web presence under one common look-feel and company name.  Seeing as how we are fairly small, I'm thinking the best way to do this would be to simply create a "uk" folder and creating UK specific content in there. I would also like to have some geolocation on the site to make sure users receive the content that is relevant to them. With that in mind, here my questions: 1. Would creating a "locations" page with links between the UK and the US versions of the site, be enough so that Google is sure to crawl all content?  (As I understand it, Google would appear as an American visitor to my geolocation script, and wouldn't see UK content unless there was a page that would explicitly direct it in that direction, correct?) 2. I've read elsewhere that I can target specific folders to a specific geographic target using Google Webmaster Tools.  However, if the "main" site is US specific (there would not be a "us" folder)  Setting the geographic target for JUST the "uk" folder would still work? 3. Finally, there will unfortunately be some duplicate content between the two sites.  (we have a catalog of courses, for example, that contain different groupings of courses between the two sites, but the individual courses will appear with the same descriptions within the sites)  What would be the best way to deal with something like that?  I would hate to point all canonical links back to the US "main" site on every instance of duplicates, but I'm not sure how else to deal with it? Thanks for any help you can give.  I know this is all a bit top level, but I'm a bit paralyzed with fear of starting, seeing as how I've never had to deal with these questions before...

    | TroyCarlson
    0
  • ConradC


    Hi Guys, I am thinking of migrating our .co.nz and our .co.uk websites into sub folders on our .com website (eg: .com/uk and .com/nz). Do you think this is a risky strategy in regards to our performance in the localised search engines or should the centralisation of all these websites and their link authority into the .com help us move up the rankings? We are thinking of doing this in the next week, we have some really good rankings for the local googles, however we also have plenty of phrases sitting just on page 2 and I was hoping this might help boost them onto page 1? Has anyone else had experience migrating tld sites to sub folders on a .com and if so what was your experience of the impact on search rankings in the local googles and the timeframe that these changes took to have an effect? Did you have any negative results?

    | ConradC
    0
  • sjcbayona-41218


    Hi everyone! I'm trying to analyze a website which is regional in scope. The way the site for every market has been build out is like this : http://subdomain.rootdomain.com/market | http://asiapacific.thisismybrandname.com/ph OR http://subdomain.rootdomain.com/language | http://asiapacific.thisismybrandname.com/en Since this is the first time I'm trying to work on these kinds of sites, I would want to ask for any guidance / tips on how to do about SEO site and technical audit. FYI, the owner of the sites is not giving me access / data to their webmaster account nor their analytics tracking tool. Thanks everyone! Steve

    | sjcbayona-41218
    0
  • LoweProfero-AU


    Hello, Cant find any clear answers on my issue and hope someone can help. Rather than being worried about losing local rankings with a move to the cloud, we have the opposite issue. The site is a large, international reference site with millions of visits a month. We have the site on servers hosting in UK, Europe and US. If we move the site to Amazon cloud hosting (obvious benefits aside), is there a danger of losing rankings internationally (depending on where the cloud datacentre is located)? Are their any other possible pitfalls and counters? Would be grateful for some advice on this. Thanks

    | LoweProfero-AU
    0
  • CameronT


    How do you go about submitting US news (based in the UK) to get indexed on Google News and show up in the US rather then the UK?

    | CameronT
    0
  • Melia


    I have a different problem then most. My international website (www.solmelia.com) is showing number one in english for "sol melia" in the Mexican google search engine. Plus the 3rd listing on google.com.mx is our homepage in spanish but it is showing up as a 401. We need to redirect the ccTLD (www.solmelia.es) to our current spanish version that is actually a subdomain (es.solmelia.com). Please let me know how I can fix both issues.

    | Melia
    0
  • cgray01


    If a real estate client of mine only wants to rank in the Google.ca, Yahoo.ca, and Bing.ca listings (doesn't care about the U.S. search engines), would it be advantageous of me to have her domain name by .ca and forget the .com? She lives here in Phoenix, is originally Canadian, and goes back and forth. Interestingly, when searching in Google.ca, most domain names or .com. Is this because these people are trying to target both search engines? Thank you! Chris Gray

    | cgray01
    0
  • ConradC


    Hi There, We are an online retailer with four (and soon to be five) distinct geographic target markets (we have physical operations in both the UK and New Zealand). We currently target these markets like this: United Kingdom (www.natureshop.co.uk) New Zealand (www.natureshop.co.nz) Australia (www.natureshop.com/au) - using a google web master tools geo targeted folder United States (www.natureshop.com) - using google web master tools geo targeted domain Germany (www.natureshop.de) - in german and yet to be launched as full site We have various issues we want to address. The key one is this: our www.natureshop.co.uk website was adversely affected by the panda update on April 12. We had some external seo firms work on this site for us and unfortunately the links they gained for us were very low quality, from sometimes spammy sites and also "keyword" packed with very littlle anchor text variation. Our other websites (the .co.nz and .com) moved up after the updates so I can only assume our external seo consultants were responsible for this. I have since managed to get them to remove around 70% of these links and we have bought all seo efforts back in house again. I have also worked to improve the quality of our content on this site and I have 404'ed the six worst affected pages (the ones that had far too many single phrase anchor text links coming into them). We have however not budged much in our rankings (we have made some small gains but not a lot). Our other weakness's are not the fastest page load times and some "thin" content. We are on the cusp (around 4 weeks away) of deploying a brand new platform using asp.net MVP with N2 and this looks like it will address our page load speed issues. We also have been working hard on our content building and I believe we will address that as well with this release. Sorry for the long build up, however I felt some background was needed to get to my questions. My questions are: Do you think we are best to proceed with trying to get our www.natureshop.co.uk website out of the panda trap or should we consider deploying a new version of the site on www.natureshop.com/uk/ (geo targeted to the UK)? If we are to do this should we do the same for New Zealand and Germany and redirect the existing domains to the new geo targeted folders? If we do this should we redirect the natureshop.co.uk pages to the new www.natureshop.com/uk/ pages or will this simply pass on the panda "penalty". Will this model build stronger authority on the .com domain that benefit all of the geo targeted sub folders or does it not work this way? Finally can we deploy the same pages and content on the different geo targeted sub folders (with some subtle regional variations of spelling and language) or will this result in a duplicate content penalty? Thank you very much in advance to all of you and I apologise for the length and complexity of the question. Kind Regards
    Conrad Cranfield
    Founder: Nature Shop Ltd

    | ConradC
    0
  • ClaytonKendall


    We run a Canadian website and are interested in seeing what SERPs look like from specific postal codes. Is there any way to manipulate Google to think our IP address comes from another location? Thanks!

    | ClaytonKendall
    0
  • Turkey


    HI I am looking to rank sites in multiple foreign search engines. I am thinking about the anchor text strategies I need to employ. My key phrase: golfschläger (golf club) I am targeting a German page (written in German). Would Google understand that if I use the anchor text “golf club” to my German “golfschläger” page, it is infact the same word and therefore give anchor text benefits to that page, or for anchor text benefits to pass does the anchor text have to be in the same language? thanks for any help!!!!

    | Turkey
    0
  • JaspalX


    Has anyone got any tips on targeting searchers in Japan from a UK site? This is for a (very) small and niche B2B site. I've looked at the WBF on international SEO etc. so here, I'm hoping you'll be able to help with which engines & optimisation tips for those engines - I've read that Google Japan is big, but are there any others that people would recommend? Thanks!

    | JaspalX
    0
  • eMagineSEO


    Looking for experienced feedback on a new client challenge. Multiple pages of content in the English language are replicated across multiple CCTLDs in addition to the .com address we're working with. Is duplicate content a concern in this case? What measures are recommended to help preserve their North American search inclusion while not serving as a detriment to external (European/Asian CCTLDs) properties aimed for other geos/languages? EDIT: After posting, this was read. Any thoughts? http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-tools-provides-details-on-duplicate-content-across-domains-99246

    | eMagineSEO
    0
  • processia


    Hi guys, I have a pretty good success in many of my keyword on google US. We are a multi-country company and would like to get better ranking on all these countries. I know it's a long run and we need to by patient to get the rank desired. We are getting the slowly, bu surely. In the next couple of months, we will be attending a conference where we will have a booth and we would like to conduct a campaign to invite customers to join us. My question is : Is there an efficient way to have just couple of  pages on our web site that could potentially rank fast on a specific geography ? Europe is my target audience ( France an UK ). If you have any advice, I would appreciate. Best regards,

    | processia
    1
  • Melia


    Our website has creating numberous "future pages" with no alt tag or class tag that are showing up as 404 pages, To make matters worst, they are causing duplicate 404 pages because we have different languages. The visitors cant find the 404s but the searchbots can. Would it better to remove or add the links to robot.txt or add nofollow/noindex tag? This is an example. http://www.solmelia.com/nGeneral.LINK_FAQ http://www.solmelia.com/nGeneral.LINK_HOTELESDESTINOS_BODAS http://www.solmelia.com/nGeneral.LINK_CONDICIONES http://www.solmelia.com/nGeneral.LINK_MAPSITE http://www.solmelia.com/nGeneral.LINK_HOTELESDESTINOS_EMPRESA

    | Melia
    0
  • jez000


    Hi, my content is primarily for Australian audiences, however due to a general lack of competitive hosting infrastructure, I tend to host a lot of content in the US. A 2007 article I read implied that it's not a good idea - does anyone have a definitive 2011 answer? Cheers, Jez

    | jez000
    0
  • Dennis-52961


    I've tried a few proxy tools to try to see how my site looks from other global locations, but haven't found one that works very well yet -- or a list of reliable proxies around the world. I need to do this to test various geo-targetted ads and other optimizations. Can anyone make a recommendation? Thanks!

    | Dennis-52961
    0
  • Melia


    Hi, I am having a problem with geotargeting. I have gTLD (solmelia.com) but my international languages are in subdomains. My english version is showing in the google mexico search engine. I need to know what I can do to show our international as well as regional languages (fr.solmelia.com) in the right search engines. Also, having problem with mexico (es) and spain (es) causing dulipication issues and showing in both search engines. I dont think geotargeting in webmaster tools would be the action or setting a lang attribute. Let me know what you think I should I do.

    | Melia
    0
  • Melia


    I have a different problem then most. My international website (www.solmelia.com) is showing number one in english for "SOL MELIA" in the Mexican google search engine. Plus the 3rd listing on google.com.mx is our homepage in spanish but it is showing up as a 401. We need to redirect the ccTLD (www.solmelia.es) to our current spanish version that is actually a subdomain (es.solmelia.com). Please let me know how I can fix both issues.

    | Melia
    0
  • OnPage1


    I have got a site targeted for a New Zealand audience. The site is about property in Australia. The SERP for the keyword "real estate australia" is dominated by .com.au domains which are obviously set for Australia. Does google give .co.nz domains priority in the SERPs for New Zealand or are .com.au and .co.nz domains treated evenly for New Zealand based searches? http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=real+estate+australia&pws=0&gl=NZ Would a .co.nz domain have higher priority in this SERP?

    | OnPage1
    0
  • Leighm


    I have a client that's setting up a section of his site in a different language, and we're planning to geo-target those pages to that country. I have suggested a sub-folder solution as it's the most cost effective solution, and it will allow domain authority to flow into those pages. His developer is indicating that they can only set this up as a sub-domain, for technical reasons, but they're suggesting they can rewrite the url's to appear as sub folder pages. I'm wondering how this will work in terms of geo-targeting in Google Webmaster Tools. Do I geo-target the sub domain or the sub folder i.e. does Google only see urls or does it physically see those pages on the sub-domain? It seems like it might be a messy solution. Would it be a better idea just to forget about the rewrites and live with the site being a sub domain? Thanks,

    | Leighm
    0
  • Eladla


    Hi, I have a website geared towards an international crowd. It is written in English on the .com TLD. We are currently having it translated to Japanese on the .jp TLD and to French on the .fr TLD. Is getting a TLD for each country/translation a good way to go? Not only in terms of SEO, but is this the best way to get found in these other countries? Second questions: Would getting TLDs in other English speaking countries do any good? Like .com.au or .com.nz or .ca? Again, both in terms of SEO and reach for users in those countries. Last question, since I'm not going to change the content much (or any...) for the other English TLDs, how should I go about them? 301 redirect to the .com website? Show same content without a redirect? Other idea? Thank you in advance! -Elad

    | Eladla
    0
  • MFC


    I am in need of advice regarding back links that we did not place, and which are hurting our search engine results. How and why they got there I cannot explain.But they have appeared recently, and are damaging our SERP ranks. For several years, I have been a member with SEOmoz, and we have done our search engine optimization in house. I am the owner of a personal injury law firm, which is a competitive field in search engine optimization. Recently, in the spring, we updated our website, added significant content (over 100 additional pages), we set up a better site structure, and we completed a significant back link campaign from white hat sources. As a result, we were the strongest law firm in search engine results in the state of Arizona,   and the page rank from our home page went from a 4 to 6, and from our next highest level of pages, they went from a 3 to 6. This happened in 10 week period. Our search engine results were fantastic. We were getting a significant amount of business from out Places page and our Organic results. That has almost completely dried up. Approximately 6-8 weeks later, we started having some serious problems. Specifically, our search engine results decreased significantly, our page rank reduced from a six to a four. So we started using SEOmoz tools to see what the problem was, and when we created an open site Explorer report, there are approximately 1000 different links from very shady websites they are now linking to our home page.  Some of these linking URLs prompt a download to video and other files. Other of the linking are simple on junk sites. Obviously, some other person placed these links. First and foremost I am interested in maintaining the integrity of our site, and if there were a way to remove these links, and protect against that in the future, that is what I want. Secondly, if there were a way to find out who did this, I would like to know that also. What options and/or actions should be taken. I am thinking that I may need to employ a professional/consultant. Will I have to transfer content to another domain? Your thought and help are appreciated. Thanks,

    | MFC
    0
  • MarinaUX


    We started out as a Canadian site targeting Canadian users. Now our site http://iCraft.ca has a lot of international buyers and sellers and .ca TLD doesn’t make sense anymore, as we are not performing well on Google.com We are doing a complete site redesign right now, which will address a lot of coding and content specific issues, but we suspect .ca domain will always hold us back in achieving good positions on Google.com. Since Google doesn’t allow ccTLDs to set geo-targeting, what are our options? a) Migrating to a brand new .com site and setting up 301 redirects for all links from iCraft.ca. Would we lose all rankings in this example and pretty much start building them from scratch? Or would PR be transferred page by page from one domain to another through 301 redirects? b) Setup a separate .com site with mirrored content to target global audience and keep .ca site to target Canada. Not sure if splitting PR for the same pages between 2 sites is a good idea. Also, how would you address duplicate content properly in our situation?
    In this video that I found here on forum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo Matt Cutts says that it’s ok to have duplicate content on different ccTLDs, but he says - make sure you localize your content on those domains. What if you can’t? Most of the content on our site is meant for anyone, not just Canadian users. So, for the most part, we’d have exactly same content on .com site, as we have on .ca site. We could display prices in different currencies on product pages, but the rest of the content – blogs, forum etc. are not country-specific and can’t be localized easily. Also, it’s not clear from the video if all mirrored sites should sit on the same domain name for each country, like example.com and example.ca or is it ok to have example.com and icraft.ca? c) Is there a better option? Thanks for your help!

    | MarinaUX
    0
  • RyanSat


    My website has 3 services and its price will be different for US/EU/Developed world and Asian/African countries.Apart from pricing page, all other things remain same. I want to use IP based redirect .I heard this thing is called cloaking and used by black-hat guys. What kind of instructions should I give to my web developer to look best to Google/Search bots and correctly show visitors the intended prices.Is there any caution to be taken care of. Thanks for your time

    | RyanSat
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Browse Questions

Explore more categories

  • Moz Tools

    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

  • SEO Tactics

    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

  • Community

    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

  • Support

    Connect on product support and feature requests.

Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.